Multimedia content, namely, the combination of text, animated graphics, video, and sound, presents information in a way that is more interesting and easier to grasp than text alone. Multimedia content has been used for education at all levels, job training, and games by the entertainment industry. Multimedia content is becoming more readily available as the price of personal computers and their accessories declines.
Multimedia systems need a delivery mechanism to get the multimedia content to a user. Magnetic and optical disks were the first media for distribution. The Internet, as well as the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol suite or Net BIOS on isolated or campus LANs, became the next vehicles for distribution. The rich text and graphics capabilities of the World Wide Web browsers are being augmented with animations, video, and sound. Internet distribution is being augmented by distribution via satellite, wireless, and cable systems.
Multimedia content files can often be accessed via more than one accessing system. For example, an audio file can be accessed via a CD player, a DVD player, an mp3 player, and the like. Furthermore, an accessing system can access more than one type of multimedia content file. For example, a media player such as Windows media player (Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both) can access audio files, video files, digital broadcast signals, and the like.
Due to the vast amount of multimedia content files and accessing systems that exist today, the user is faced with a diverse and large choice of multimedia content files and accessing systems to execute. For example, if the user has a multimedia content file to execute and chooses a first accessing system to access it, there may be a second, more appropriate (e.g. cheaper to run or better quality output) accessing system that the user is unaware of, that can also access the multimedia content file. Thus, in this example, the user has not chosen the most appropriate accessing system; therefore, the multimedia content file has not been accessed optimally. This problem increases as the number of options of multimedia content files and/or accessing systems increase.